A night out on the town

This past weekend we were blessed with a night out. It was to a friend's wedding in Ames and we sent Tessa to Grandma's so we could have an adults only night. Granted, I ended up being the designated driver so everyone else could let loose, but we still had so much fun. The reception was at Hickory Hall which is a hidden gem in Ames, run by the infamous Hickorky Park deliciousness.

We skipped the wedding and went to the reception where we got a great table. Between the delicious food, fun with friends from the police department, and free beer, everyone was having a blast. I even got a couple photos of Joel dancing, something that is rare sight.

 Dave and Roxanne, Tessa's future in laws.

I was overtired and a few hours past my bedtime, but it was well worth it to be out for a night child free and watching everyone people able to let loose for the first time in a long time.

Waterbug

Tessa has discovered for her love for all things water. This includes washing her hands, bathtime, and especially swimming. Every time we get home and walk into the house, she runs for the back door and wants to go outside to go "women". She knows her little pool is out there and she would spend all day in the pool if we let her. These are from Memorial Day weekend but she swims at least 3-4 days a week. Luckily we were blessed with some hand-me-downs so she has 5 swimsuits.

 She spends her time  pouring some sugar on her dumping buckets of water on herself.

 Yeah, she's totally learning to pose. The attitude that comes out of a 2.5 ft tall toddler is astounding.

 The set up. All her sand toys end up in the pool.

Stopping for a drink break. Only this girl begs for milk on a 95 degree day after swimming hard.

The hard part is getting her out of the water. It usually ends in a meltdown, so we have to time her swimming schedule so we can have another fun activity to distract her. Or food. Enticing her inside with food usually works too.

28 Weeks

I can't believe how quickly this pregnancy is flying by. I'm just shocked that I'm already 28 weeks pregnant, with only 11 to go. I'm still having quite a bit of sickness and many foods still don't settle well. The only real cravings I've had are for blueberry muffins and iced lattes (decaf, usually). Most of my aversions are meat, but I love eating fruit.

Tessa is very curious about the baby and my growing stomach. She knows to be gentle, but sometimes forgets she can't just plop into my lap or climb on me much. She's very nurturing though, and loves her little babies so I'm sure she'll be a great big sister.

Apple chips

Thanks to Pinterest, I've been trying many new things. New recips, new projects, and lots of dreams of what I can do in the future. Last night I realized that the apples I had purchased a couple days before weren't as crispy as I'd like. I need my apples very crunchy. Any hint of mush and the apples are not edible, at least as raw apples. I already had the oven on from making supper, so I figured I'd give a recipe a shot.

I usually just peel and dice the apples, sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar on them, and bake them in a casserole dish until they are soft. Then I'll eat them as chunky applesauce. I had a different idea for these apples.


I found this recipe on Pinterest, linked to the blog of some crafty lady who wanted to do the hard work for me and and just tell me how to make the apples delicious.

This is her picture, because it is far better than mine.  The recipe is simple.

What you will need:

• 2 apples
• Cinnamon

Directions:

• Remove apple core.
• Thinly slice the entire apple.
• Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and place apple slices on it.
• Sprinkle with cinnamon.
• Bake at 275 degrees for two hours. At the end of hour one flip them over so they bake evenly.

I baked mine for an hour and a half total. This made them more like dried apples, not apple chips. But if I would have left them in longer, they were starting to crisp and would have become crunchy. I also learned that cinnamon/sugar mix is not a substitute for cinnamon. We ran out of cinnamon so I used what I could find--a container of cinnamon and sugar we'd previously mixed together. They were almost too sweet and the sugar didn't dissolve in the apples. Just cinnamon would be perfect, although they'd be fine with nothing on them.

These were delicious, and only lasted until the next day.

Communication

I love that Tessa is at the stage where she is becoming an effective communicator. She tells us when she's hungry, when she's thirsty, when she pooped, what she wants, and where everyone is or should be.

I hate that Tessa is at the stage where she is becoming an effective communicator. She tells us when she's hungry, when she's thirsty, when she pooped, what she wants, and where everyone is or should be.

Yep, that's right. It's the best and worst thing so far about her growing up. If she wants it, it must be RIGHT NAO. If she can't have it, it's a meltdown, of the epic variety. She gets a one track mind about what she wants, and it's not as easy to distract her so she forgets anymore.

If she's hungry and you tell her it's not quite time to eat, she will go to wherever you are and try to physically remove you from the couch, the bed, the tub, the toilet, etc. She will grab your arm, pinch you, whine & cry to get you to eat. If that doesn't work, she'll crawl on the kitchen table.

We also name everything we see at least 50 times a day.  For example:

Lamp

Tessa: Lamp. Broke it. (One time she knocked over the floor lamp and I said she broke it, so now that is the official title of the lamp)

Me: Yep, that's the lamp. You broke it. But daddy fixed it, remember?

Tessa: Daddy fixed it.

At least every 10 minutes.

Ottoman

Tessa: Tessa color

Me: Yes, Tessa. You colored on the ottoman. That's a no-no.

Tessa:  :::points to ottoman::: This color. No No.

Daddy

Tessa: Where's daddy go?

Me: Daddy's bye-bye. He's working.

Tessa: Dada Work. Bye Bye Daddy. ::runs to all the doors to verify he is in fact gone and waves:::


She's also incredibly particular. She knows yes and no so well, she loves telling us her opinion.

Me: Tessa, do you want supper?

Tessa: Supper!! :::runs to kitchen:: "Up please, supper, EAT!"

Me: Ok, I have to cook it.

Tessa: NO! EAT!

Me: Yes, we'll eat. After I cook it.

Tessa: ::meltdown:: EAT! NOW. Supper.

I forsee a long future full of "MOM YOU ARE THE MEANEST PERSON EVER HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!?!"

Week 24

I've made it to week 24. Only 15 to go. Technically, this baby is now viable, meaning that it could live outside the womb. However, I'm going to keep baking this baby so it'll come out a little chunkier.

My OB said I was a dream patient and he wished they were all that easy. Pshhh. It's pretty easy to show up at the appointments. I did find out that my OB's nurse is leaving and I'm so sad about that. She is so wonderful and welcoming in the office, and I'll miss her. Luckily she's still going to be employed by the hospital so I'll still see her, just not in that capacity.

I'm up a whopping 2 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight. I guess when you start by losing 9, there's some catch up to do. I'm feeling better most days, but some days the nausea still hits me and I just don't feel like eating much.

Baby Murph is pretty active most of the time. It's not uncomfortable yet but sometimes when I forget I'm pregnant, I get reminded with a swift jab.

Tessa is still loving this baby, even though she thinks the baby is my belly button. It's pretty cute though.

18 months

We had Tessa's 18 month appointment last week. She is still a runt, at 23 pounds and 30.5 inches tall. But, she's a very healthy and active gal! While speaking to the doctor, she decided to open the door and explore the office. Since we're familiar with the office and know everyone, we weren't worried. Until she didn't come back for 10 minutes. I went to find her, and the front office girls had put her to work. She was sitting in the desk chair, wearing only her diaper, typing a document in Microsoft Word and eating animal crackers. What a silly girl!

She is such a ham these days and is quite a social little girl. It's fun to watch her string together words to make phrases and sentences, and everyday she seems to pick up something new.

She loves to pick up my purse, fling it over her shoulder and try to walk out the door, all the while hollering, "Tessa bye-bye. Love you." Well, ok then dear.

Bath time is still her favorite part of the day, and all of a sudden, she's become very clingy with her blankey. It doesn't matter which one she has, but when she starts to get mad, she needs a blanket. Oh well. It's a small request.

Our new niece!

As of early Friday morning, we have a new niece! Joel's brother Brett and his wife, Ashley, had their 2nd girl! Brynn is Tessa's buddy and they are 6 weeks apart, so I was curious to see how Tessa and Brynn would interact with the new baby.

Kiernan Reagan was born early in the morning on Friday. We made a trip down to Des Moines Friday after work to see them and boy, she's cute! Ashley and I went through our first pregnancies together and also, this one, so it's fun to see what my life will be like in a few months.

Tessa was instantly smitten. She just wanted to hug and kiss the baby the whole time. We let her rocky-bye (rock in the rocking chair) and then we let her hold her. I was very unsure about this, since I had no idea how'd she would treat a newborn. She has a couple babies at home, but they sometimes get drug around by the hair and usually end up being put "nigh-night" in the couch, face down, covered in a blanket.

 She was listening very carefully to Uncle Brett's instructions. She takes her cousin role very seriously sometimes. She just wanted to give hugs and kisses the whole time and was very gentle with little Kiernan. I was very grateful for that.

 After a few minutes, she decided that this was pretty cool! Granted, Kiernan didn't come home with us. I can only hope she reacts this well when Baby Delaney comes home! August 30th, we'll know!

In other news, we've decided on names. We opted not to find out the sex this time, since I've got a c-section scheduled for August 30. But, we've chosen names. If it's a boy: Colton James. If it's a girl: Norah Ann.

Names

We have had a more difficult time with names this pregnancy. Last time, we agreed almost immediately on Tessa's name.

This time is a battle. We have narrowed it down to 2 boys names and 2 girls names, and are now at a deadlock.

Boys:
Drake
Miles

Girls:
Piper
Norah

Who will prevail?!

Baby Murph

We are at the halfway point for Baby Murphy. We have decided for this pregnancy to not find out the sex, which I have found incredibly difficult. I like to plan things, so not knowing what kind of baby we'll be bringing home is a little overwhelming. We have everything we need if it is a girl, but what if it is a boy?! What will we do?

The hubs has decided to name this baby Murphy, because of Murphy's law. So far, everything that can go wrong, does. Except of course, we do still have a healthy fetus growing. It's been hiccup after hiccup though.

At 6 weeks, I had intense cramping on my left side. They wanted to rule out an ectopic pregnancy, so I had a transvaginal ultrasound with my date LaWanda. (Side note, for anyone interested, I am a huge proponent of NOT forcing women to have this test done. They are uncomfortable, painful, and awkward.) They found a healthy fetus with no reason for cramping. They also mentioned that the baby's heart rate was low, and that I should prepare for a possible miscarriage. I had  repeat ultrasound a week later, expecting there to be no heart beat, but hoping for the best. The heart beat was still there. Great! However, we know the odds were still against us, because 70% of all pregnancies with a 6week heartrate of below 100 ends in miscarriage. Murphy's was 89 at 6 weeks, and 126 at 7 weeks.

At 9 weeks, I was at work and experienced very severe abdominal pain and cramping. So bad, in fact, that I almost made myself a patient at work. I was able to hide out in one of the rooms and one of the oh-so-kind docs did a quick pelvic exam to find my cervix was still closed and paged the OB on call. I found out the next day that I had a cyst that ruptured. While they'd normally do a CT to confirm, that wasn't an option so they did another ultrasound which showed some fluid, consistent with a burst cyst.

At 12 weeks, the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat via doppler. It took the ultrasound machine to see that the baby was doing flips, literally. Even then, it was hard to get a number so we knew a heart rate.

At 19 weeks, I tried to electrocute myself unplugging a light in the basement.

Yesterday, I found out that I have a low lying placenta which will have to be monitored to make sure it moves up away from the cervix before delivery. 

I keep expecting the worst, because besides morning sickness, I had no problems with Tessa when I was pregnant. There are tons of little things that keep popping up.

But, on or before August 30, we will have Baby Murphy here!